I'm not a violent person, never was, but I have this temperament that I've always displayed. I guess it has to do with my tradition and being Italian, we're very outgoing with our emotions.

The hardest thing about being famous is that people are always nice to you. You're in a conversation and everybody's agreeing with what you're saying - even if you say something totally crazy. You need people who can tell you what you don't want to hear.

Did you know I started out as a stand-up comic? People don't believe me when I tell them. That's how I saw myself, in comedy.

I'm an actor, and everything about me - the way I perceive things, the way I have seen the world - has been in relation to characters and how I would want to play something or not play it.

I had these little babies [my twins] and it gave me something so spectacular, such a feeling - I was so turned on and so excited by them that I wrote a poem. I had it on scraps of paper and the maid threw it out.

It used to worry me what people said about me. I'm learning not to worry as much. Sometimes you feel critics are wrong all the time, but I don 't take objection to it, because that's the way it goes. They can be wrong, they can be right. They can be cruel, they can be kind.

I used to think of myself as a comedian. I've always admired comedians. Their minds, the way in which they se the world is so striking, the way they juxtapose things, the way they can see humor in people. There's a liberation in that.